Alice McGrath RIP

Photo courtesy of the Los Angeles Times

 A previous Immigrant of the Day, Alice McGrath, who was an activist who worked successfully for the release of the Sleepy Lagoon murder defendants who were tried for a murder that they did not commit in Los Angeles in 1942, has died at age 92.  As the Los Angeles Times describes the case, “Attorney George Shibley was defending 22 Mexican Americans, ages 17 to 21, who were charged with killing a young Mexican farmworker near a swimming hole in southeast L.A. County known as Sleepy Lagoon. Shibley needed someone to write summaries of the daily proceedings of the trial, which would later become known as one of the most racist in local [Los Angeles] history.”  McGrath volunteered and became friends with the defendants, visiting them in jail until their convictions were thrown out on appeal.  Her role was made famous in the Luis Valdez play that was later made into the movie “Zoot Suit.”

McGrath later said that her work on the Sleepy Lagoon case was of the most important things that she had done in her life.

KJ